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scaling

Scaling was a fabulous perspective (sic) on modelling and systems.

I think it fits really well with the concept David had early on in his work "What has to be true for this symptom to exist"

He was wondering about the scaling of the client, of their problem and of their attention.
What is the difference between the sense of scale of a dentist t the sense of scale of someone who models complex weather systems.

I use the ideas he shared with me to consider the scale of the client in relation to their world and aspects of their world and when they change.

I also use it when modelling an organisation/system and talking to clients to notice how they are scaling; people, money, deadlines, targets etc.

David and I discussed this during a walk in Kafia and there wasn't a specific application in mind. I talked of using it with Training Attention's 5 senses exercise, he talked of it changing through clean world's.

Weaving these threads

I read your article on scale a long time ago and was influenced by it, for sure in my thinking at the time.

Answering your question "is there a relationship between ...?"

Yes, and what kind of relationship...?

Certainly throughout 2006 scaling was "the best next thing", bringing David's early work together with emergence - where loads of paper would be spread over surfaces as landscapes emerged and evolved. And for "global personal change" I perceive scaling to be the most effective way, because it is so gently adjacent. Over several days, people add to the initial context and gradually expand around the edges until some constraint or insight causes a "re-scaling" and a consequence "re-drawing"/re-representing. Eventually a person ends up at 1:1 scale with the child landscape of the initial signal/communication and the process is complete.

The smaller the adjacent step the easier the answer as a ruie, so the simple "anything else go on there/with that, or just next to, or just around?" kind of explorations gently allow the exploring.

For "keyhole surgery" and time-constrained sessions, there are more appropriate processes, but I feel this would go into another thread.

The scaling is like an open-heart surgery - it is a long operation and requires all the time, space and support needed of such a major operation, thus several days. But also the scaling gently peels back layers leaving no scars, so it is also not like the medical open-heart, but more like cosmetic, but also unlike cosmetic because it is so much more than skin deep!

I'm wondering whether there is something in common about adjacency and scaling ..... in that they attempt to honour the process/structure of creating/scaling symptoms as well as the symptom.

In Systemic Modelling, we are honouring the idiosynchracies of the individuals and the differences betweeen the individuals and therefore the structure or scalings of the group, whatever its dynamic; and then, having been honoured the group structure starts to honour itself and then evolves towards more wellbeing from within its own volition. Some scales remain intact, others change dramatically until the system settles where more people can be more of themselves more of the time.

A lot of the time we are acknowledging the scales between things without requiring that they change, thereby honouring the scaler and indeed the process of scaling.

This process is very similar in adjacency which helps to provide contexts for the differences/similarities at the same time as offering more scope for alternatives.

As Steve Saunders is saying, careful work with adjacency and scaling means that you can deconstruct it without inflicting pain and without having any contempt for the structure of it.

In symbolic modelling when you are working with an individual system you are honouring the different scalings and not berating it for being 'out of scale' then the 'scalers' can emerge without having to defend their scale and join in a dance (to use my metaphors)

I'm still tossing around ideas, thank you for adding some dressing to my salad. Looking forward to some more ideas. xx

Penny: "Is there a relationship between 'scaling', 'adjacency' and 'the best next thing'?
I'm wondering how or if we can weave these threads together."

As much as would like to please you and find a common feature, to me, these are all different things:

‘Adjacency’ is something that is perceived together with something else. It can cause classical conditioning. I rather make a distinction in adjacency in space and ‘coincidence’ in time. (see my thread ‘clean timing’ in the CS section). An adjacent space in the context of clean space is a space that is just outside someone’s (conscious) perception, like A1, but might be associated with it. (Note: that is different from when someone makes a drawing and leaves out something that apparently belongs to the system presented, like a circle that goes outside the page; David would make you add another piece of paper and finish it.)

‘The next best thing’ is like a surrogate for something else, so it is not next in space, but means it will do as a replacement for something you can’t have right now. Whereas a symbol can be a replacement and even become an icon, a surrogate is usually perceived as a less quality than the real thing. David used it in clean space, when somebody wanted to move to a certain space that wasn’t available for practical reasons: he called it a proxy space. (Or he would just let them go outside in the freezing cold and talk to them on the phone, sitting comfortably by the fire himself!)

Zooming in or zooming out is looking at something with more or less detail, like the pictures James shows.

‘Scaling’ is a technique David used in EK. My understanding of it is that if you invite the mind to go beyond the present A-C-B system, the brain gets ‘loosened up a bit’ as David referred to it. When the attention is invited to move outside the ‘tunnel-vision’ , (unlike zooming out it is not thinking in less detail), some energy may present itself.
From an earlier contribution of me: "What I am referring to is systems, as the client perceives them. E.g. a room, outside that a hallway, outside that a house, a garden, a village, the fields, the country, the planet, the universe, other universes […]. A few weeks ago I visited the new planetarium at the Amsterdam Zoo: the camera takes you from Planet Earth to the solar system, flies over Mars and Venus, goes on into the Milky Way and beyond (based on real images).
What typically happens is that at some point something emerges from the mind that would be strange in that context, or a pronoun (I, me, your name) is used. Then David will ask how old you are and what you are wearing and go from there. You know you've reached the right scale when it is fitting that age, e.g. referring to the size of a cupboard a three year old would look up, because it's bigger than (s)he. Or people sit down on the floor, like a young child would.
As soon as the adult recognizes that situation and can integrate it, a system shift occurs and the dissociated part connects to the whole, which gives a huge physical reaction. That's how you know you've done your job, David would say:"

Or, as J&P wrote: "David Grove says that when an inappropriately proportioned perception becomes ‘life-size’ relative to the age/size of the client, you know a significant change has taken place."

J&P: "Fortunately we can learn to re-scale our perceptions so that we more appropriately perceive our interior and exterior worlds."
‘Re-scaling’ sounds very much like an NLP-technique to me, as does using ‘adjacency’ as Steve describes it: "I perceive scaling to be the most effective way, because it is so gently adjacent. Over several days, people add to the initial context and gradually expand around the edges until some constraint or insight causes a "re-scaling" and a consequence "re-drawing"/re-representing. Eventually a person ends up at 1:1 scale with the child landscape of the initial signal/communication and the process is complete.
The smaller the adjacent step the easier the answer as a rule, so the simple "anything else go on there/with that, or just next to, or just around?" kind of explorations gently allow the exploring.
The scaling is like an open-heart surgery - it is a long operation and requires all the time, space and support needed of such a major operation, thus several days. But also the scaling gently peels back layers leaving no scars, so it is […] like cosmetic, but […] so much more than skin deep!"

Scaling doesn’t take that much time, it’s only a few minutes to the end of the universe and that brick wall at the end of the garden.